Nora dropped a courtesy, and with the tail of her eye observed,
labelled, and docketed Francis Ravenel.

"Will your lordship be seated," she said. "Miss Katrine will be back in
a minute. She's gone to ask after Miranda's baby. Nothin' seems able to
stop her from regardin' the naygurs as human beings. If 'twere not that
I know she'd be here immejit I'd go afther her mysel', and not keep your
lordship waitin'."

She motioned him to a wide settle on the porch with an alert
hospitality. In her heart she preferred Dermott McDermott to all
possible suitors for Katrine, but if this was another jo, as the Scotch
say, so much the better, for one might urge the other on, she thought,
with primitive sagacity.

"Would ye have a drop of Scotch?" she asked, and upon Francis declining
she reseated herself at her wheel, "with his permission," as she put it,
delighted, Celtlike, at the chance for conversation. "Ye're perhaps,"
she says, with some humor, "like the man in the old, old tale when a
friend asked him to take a drink. He said he couldn't for three reasons.
First, he'd promised his mother he never would drink; second, his doctor
had tould him he mustn't drink; and, third, he'd just had a drink."

Frank laughed back at the merry old woman as she sat at the whirring
wheel, her accustomed eyes scarcely glancing at the work in her scrutiny
of him.

"Dulany's not at home this day. I'm sorry," she went on. "He's off about
the sawmill of that triflin' Shehan man. Did ye hear that about his